pH: A Novel. Nancy Lord
had never guessed that the man who loved copepods could project quite so much negative energy. Something was seriously out of alignment.
They went up to the wheelhouse to talk to Captain Billy. He was picking on his guitar, but he stopped to hear her out. If his eyebrows went up, at least he didn’t yell. Potentially this was because Ray had already led with, “I told her absolutely no, but she wants to explain to you herself what she was going to come up here and tell you anyway. It’s about art.”
And so she had to defend the whole effort again. The paper she used was made from plant fibers and had not killed any trees or been bleached or chemically treated in any way; it was acid-free. The ice was made from freshwater and was not significantly different from sea ice, which loses its salt when it freezes. (She knew they must both know all about sea ice, but she felt it important to show that she knew.) There was a little soy-based ink on some of the sculptures, very organic. And she would be using very small dabs of an organic clay as adhesive. She would not light the sculptures until they were in the water, and she would use a pole to immediately steer them away from the ship. The weather was as calm as could be, a good omen.
Captain Billy looked amused.
“It’s out of the question,” Ray said.
“I’ve been seeing a lot of pomarine jaegers,” Captain Billy said, pointing through the window. “More than usual.”
Annabel said, “I’ll wear a float coat and will also tie into a line that someone can hold. I’m always very safety-conscious.”
Captain Billy turned to her. “You won’t throw any stones into the sea, will you?”
“No, of course not. I don’t have any stones. It’s just paper and ice, and they’ll both disappear.”
Ray started to say something, but Captain Billy cut him off. “Because throwing stones into the sea causes huge waves and storms.”
Annabel couldn’t tell from his face if she was meant to believe him.
“And no flowers?”
“I don’t have any flowers. Where would I get flowers?” She didn’t say that perhaps some of her sculptures might look like flowers.
“That’s good, because flowers on a ship are very bad luck. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because they can be made into a funeral wreath.”
Ray said, “I thought it was because flowers would draw it to earth and other flowers. The same reason it’s no good to paint a vessel green. That’s just asking for it to go aground.”
Annabel looked from one to the other. Surely they didn’t believe that crap?
Captain Billy glanced down at her sandals. “I have to ask. You don’t have flat feet, do you?”
“No, I do not have flat feet.”
“Because flat feet are very bad luck on any boat.” He adjusted something with the steering. “Well, then,” he said. “We’ve done worse things on this ship. Haven’t we, Ray? That time two years ago, the spring cruise?”
Ray pressed his lips together.
“But what I don’t get,” Captain Billy said, “is, how is that art, if there’s nothing left to see? Sorry for my ignorance.”
“Exactly my point,” Ray said. “How does that meet the objective of bringing our work to the public, of helping to interpret oceanography so that the public will have a deeper appreciation of what we do out here?”
They both looked at Annabel, like sharks that thought they had her trapped. But this was a question that she had heard before. “With art,” she said, “you don’t look for results. It operates in ways we can’t anticipate and in ways that might not be obvious. This project is about healing the ocean. That’s the best work I can do, putting my energy and my skills into that.” She paused before adding, “This is what I do. I don’t question what you do. I figure you know your business, and I trust that it has value even when I don’t understand what the measurements are or how to read these screens.” She nodded toward the electronics, with their green lines and pulsing points.
They were apparently stunned by her logic. Neither of them said anything. Captain Billy was steering his ship, and Ray picked up binoculars to look at something in the distance. When he put them down, he said, “You do understand that burning things puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the ocean absorbs much of that?”
“Compared to the fuel this boat is burning?”
“Ship,” Captain Billy said. “Maybe that’s the point. We’re all a bunch of fucking hypocrites, crying about what we’re doing to the earth and ocean while we make it all worse. Like fucking recycling, sorting out cans and cardboard. Like it makes a difference. I hate that shit.”
“It does make a difference,” Annabel said. She didn’t really mean to, but she did stamp her foot a little on the carpet, and she did have an issue with her arches although she was never going to admit it on this boat. “Every little bit makes a difference. Intention makes a difference.”
Ray put back the binoculars. “I’m going now. You two can discuss art and hypocrisy all you like. I’m not involved.”
When he was gone, Captain Billy said, “I’ve done more than I want of memorials at sea. Ashes blowing in the wind. Laying wreathes. I’m not opposed to doing something now and then that’s a bit more fun.”
Thus it was that, when the sky was dark and the smile of a moon hung over them, they gathered on the back deck. Captain Billy was standing by the closed gate, having turned the pilothouse over to the first mate and put himself in charge of operation safety. Annabel’s eleven ice platforms formed an aesthetically pleasing line across the deck and reflected the light in an interesting, fractured way. She was busy making final adjustments, adhering the sculptures to the ice with her bits of clay. She was aware that the second mate, the engineer, and the cook were all standing by the back door, looking moderately interested, and that students from both shifts were gathered around, leaning in to see what she was doing, chattering away about what they imagined the sculptures to be. “Moon jelly,” she heard. And “Irish Lord.” “This look like lemming in hospital gown,” said Nastiya, who had crouched beside Annabel and was poking a finger into one. “Nudibranch,” Marybeth said. Annabel didn’t know what a nudibranch was, but she liked the sound of it, and she liked that the girls were deploying their imaginations.
When everything was ready, Annabel gave her little speech, her invocation. She praised Sedna, the sea goddess, and asked her to forgive their boat upon the water, and all their transgressions. She specifically mentioned ocean acidification and called it, familiarly, OA. “We know not what we’ve done,” she said. She pressed her hands in the prayer position and made her bow. “Namaste. The light in me greets the light in all of you.”
The ship was now idling, just the thrum of the engines like blood coursing through all living beings. Captain Billy opened the gate and took the first sculpture on its ice base from her mittened hands into his gloved hands. He had come equipped with a sling for lowering the sculpture to the water and a trident for holding it away. The second mate stepped forward with another pole with a butane torch attached to its end and, like clockwork, the three of them passed, lowered, and lit her magnum opus. One flaming beauty after another sailed off into the darkness.
The ship throttled forward, and the lights grouped and strung out, flaring and reflecting just as she’d seen them in her mind, those bright centers of hope spreading their warmth over the surrounding sea and then dwindling, fading, dissolving into the other elements. The messages of sacred love and healing, soy-inked inside the paper folds, were released to the universe.
Tears streamed down her face, and the scene blurred before her, the tiny lights like fireflies now, blinking and wavering, and then turning off. Behind her there was a great silence and then, when the